Categories: "Agriculture" or "Coffee" or "Horticulture" or "Khat"

Attracted by the growing though recently troubled, horticulture sector in Ethiopia, Maersk, one of the top shipping lines in the world with over 325 offices in 125 countries, is to offer horticulture sea freight to Ethiopian exporters.
The company has planned to use a reefer container transport system; a scheme in which a refrigerated shipping container transports perishables, having its own stand-alone (self-powered) cooling system. This alternative is believed to relieve Ethiopia's horticulture and meat exporters from using the costly air freight.
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Since the six biggest coffee exporters were suspended from coffee trading activities and export a week ago, the daily coffee trading at the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) market had first dropped 20 percent.
Eleni Z. Gebremedhin (PhD), Chief Executive Officer, told Capital at the start of last week, that following government's measures taken on the said exporters and suppliers, coffee trading has sunk over around 300 lots (40 percent) per day.
"However, as of mid week the trading has become more alert than last week and the daily market rose to over 450 lots per day," she said.
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In a letter written to the editor of the Seattle Times on Thursday, CEO of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, Eleni Z. Gabre-Madhin, refuted a story written by one Melissa Allison in a blog on its website titled “Ethiopia halts coffee exports after forcing coffee buyers to purchase beans through its commodity exchange.”
Eleni initially asked the blogger to correct her story in an email which Allison declined to do saying in a consequent blog that her story “accurately says that country’s six largest exporters- not all of its exporters – have been shut down,” along the full text of Eleni’s email.

“I find it difficult to believe that a title that starts ‘Ethiopia halts coffee exports…’ can be in any way conceived as factually acceptable since it is blatantly false,” Eleni wrote to Allison in her email.
Read More from The Reporter ...

The Ethiopia Commodity Exchange wants people to know that the country is still exporting coffee. When I declined to correct this blog post from last week, because it accurately says that the country's six largest exporters -- not all of its exporters -- have been shut down, here's the e-mail I got in return:Read More from Seattle Times